What Do You Do?

The 6 months I’ve been doing my first ‘proper job’ has been a strange combination of being pleased with having more money than I’m used to and strongly displeased with the demands it places on my time, particularly compared to travelling. Before you roll your eyes and mutter something about millennials, I know this par for the course and very few people can, or indeed want to maintain the transient travelling lifestyle forever. But the bottom line is I think I think about work differently to a lot of people. I’m not placing a value judgement on that, its just my own interpretation. I start from the standpoint that the number one reason we all go to work is to earn money. If I could work less I would; I wouldn’t go in for the satisfaction. Ergo, money is the main driver behind my getting up every morning.

Secondly, I can’t help but view the concept of a career with suspicion, like it’s a dirty word. Because I’m an awkward bastard, I don’t like the pressures our society puts on me/us to have to say ‘I am a….’ when someone asks ‘What are you?’ I don’t like that quite a lot of people (particularly the middle aged and older) seem surprised and sometimes concerned when I say I don’t know what I want to do long term (mercifully, my parents do not fall into this category!) I quite strongly believe that my identity should not be stripped back to what I do at work. Instead, I think what I do at work is simply a means of funding what I do in my free time; that is what comprises my identity. If you’re lucky enough to truly, truly enjoy what you do at work and are happy to say ‘I’m a lawyer/doctor/nurse/carpenter’ then that’s an enviable position to be in; but as of yet I can’t say that, and I’m slightly cynical about whether many people ever truly can.

I am part of a generation which, until Brexit anyway, had unparalleled opportunity and freedom to travel, work and live wherever we want. We are also a generation for whom owning a house, seen by many as one of the major steps of adulthood, is harder than ever before. Certainly, unless I start earning a lot more than I currently do its not something I think about an awful lot. Even if I did, a large salary tend to come with additional demands on ones time in terms of hours, commitment, responsibility, going the extra mile instead of being straight out the door at 5.30, and to be perfectly honest I don’t want to put that much effort into something I don’t care about all that much. Colleagues at work have told anecdotes about friends in London, early 20’s, pulling 18 hour days at big law firms. They seemed impressed, in awe, whereas my response was something to the tune of ‘why the fuck would you do that? What is the point of earning loads of money if you’re having a shit time and you haven’t got any free time with which to enjoy your riches?’

Despite the multiple barriers in the way of my generation, some things seemed to have stayed the same in that sense; a lot of my peers are keen on a career and the stability that brings. To be clear, I’m not knocking it if that’s what you’re after; what I’m knocking is society’s failure to acknowledge those for whom that is not the preferred option. I’m not willing to routinely stay late at work or get in early when I’m being paid nothing more than average money. I’m not prepared to get stressed out at work over deadlines for the same reason. A job isn’t a privilege anymore in the way it was 50 odd years ago and I’m not convinced many bosses or management acknowledge that.

Work to live; don’t live to work. There are more important things.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Numbers Game

Image
Malham Cove Its been a while since I last wrote one of these, because it seemed to me that what I was doing with my climbing wasn’t that interesting (if it ever was!). In the first month I was in Leeds, I spent probably over £100 in fuel driving to and from Malham. The vast majority of that time I spent either warming up, resting, or hanging off one of the four bolts on Raindogs. It was a fairly big change to how I’ve always climbed; a trad climber at heart, I’ve always preferred to ‘get some mileage in,’ do as many routes as I could in a day. The concept of leaving the crag without having done a single route was anathema to me. But Malham was a big reason for moving up here. I absolutely love it there and recognised that I wouldn’t really mind projecting something there because its such a nice place to be. The river bubbling up from below, the sense of community on the Catwalk, the ubiquitous polish- and of course, the predictable, ever-dry conditions.  I wanted to...
Read more

Los Endos

Image
Los Endos from below. Onsight trad climbing, as many people far more qualified than I have commented, is the best. ‘its just more.’  (copyright Squib from this excellent video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxy01Xdww9o).  In every way, its more. It’s the best way to test yourself physically, but especially mentally. Of course sport climbing and bouldering are hard on the brain too, but not in the same way as onsight trad. It takes *so* much longer to place gear, you get way more pumped, you’re constantly grappling with ‘what if’s in the back of your mind. Sure, that piece is bomber, but the bit below it wasn’t…better put some more in, just in case. Those holds look good, but I’m not 100%...up, down, up down. Before you know it, you’re fucked and you’ve blown the onsight. And you’ve more than likely just sat on the gear you weren’t sure about, and surprise surprise- it was fine.  It can be really shit blowing the onsight, especially if you’ve bigged ...
Read more

We Need To Talk About Stokes

First things first, this isn’t a climbing blog. Narrowly speaking, this is a cricket blog (the other sport I follow messianically), but more broadly its about when violence is justified or not. Bear with me here. If you follow sport, you’ll have seen Ben Stokes, England allrounder and possibly the best player in the world right now, was arrested about a month ago on suspicion of ABH. The raw facts are available all over the internet, just google it, but briefly there was a fight on the street of which video footage exists showing Stokes first being hit with a bottle and then brawling with two other men, one of which he knocks out after scuffling for a while. At this point, the footage ends. Stokes’ private defence, it seems, is that he confronted two blokes who were shouting homophobic abuse at a gay couple. One thing led to another, Stokes is threatened with a bottle, he gets hit and then proceeds to lay the other chap out. As he put it – ‘they started it, and I finished it.’...
Read more